Todd Monken to be named Southern Miss football coach at 4:30 p.m. today

Todd Monken's Oklahoma State offense was fifth in the FBS this year. (Associated Press)

By Al Jones and Creg Stephenson

Southern Miss will introduce Todd Monken as its new football
coach at 4:30 p.m. today at the Trent Lott Center on the Hattiesburg campus, The Mississippi Press has confirmed.

Monken, 45, comes to the Golden Eagles after two years as
offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State. He replaces Ellis Johnson, who was
fired last month after going 0-12 in his lone season as Southern Miss coach.

Monken has also served as an assistant at LSU, Notre Dame,
Louisiana Tech, Eastern Michigan and with the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars in a
two-decade coaching career. A quarterback at Knox College in Illinois in the
mid-1980s, he served as wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator under Les
Miles at both Oklahoma State and LSU, and returned to the Cowboys in 2011 as
Mike Gundy's offensive coordinator after a two-year NFL stint.

Oklahoma State went 12-1 and won the Fiesta Bowl in 2011 and
is 7-5 this year heading into the Jan. 1 Heart of Dallas Bowl against Purdue.
The Cowboys rank fourth
in the country in scoring offense (44.7 points per game) and fifth in total
offense (548.2 yards per game) this season.

Southern Miss has now hired an Oklahoma State offensive
coordinator three of the last four times it has had a football coaching
opening. Jeff Bower left that same job when he took over the Golden Eagles prior
to the 1990 Independence Bowl, as did Larry Fedora when he came to USM in 2008.

A nine-man Southern Miss search committee headed up by
athletic director Jeff Hammond and also including Golden Eagles football
legends Sammy Winder and Reggie Collier interviewed close to a dozen candidates
over the weekend in New Orleans before settling on Monken. Among others
seriously considered for the job were Ohio State associate head coach/defensive
coordinator (and former USM assistant) Everett Withers, Sam Houston State head
coach Willie Fritz and North Carolina (and ex-Golden Eagles) offensive
coordinator Blake Anderson.

Monken and Anderson both interviewed at Southern Miss last
December after Fedora accepted the North Carolina job, but the Golden Eagles
chose Johnson, a long-time defensive coordinator at several SEC schools. In one
year under Johnson, the Golden Eagles crashed from 12-2 and Conference USA
champions to the only winless team in the NCAA Football Bowl Sub-division.